The General Assembly is going home without raising teacher pay and without passing a full budget. During the Tuesday, Jan. 14 session, Senate Republicans failed to garner enough votes to override the vetoes of two bills. The veto overrides for Senate Bill 354, Strengthening Educators’ Pay, and Senate Bill 553, Regulatory Reform Act of 2019,...
North Carolina is all set for its 2020 congressional and legislative elections. For now. The state Senate adopted the House’s version of the new congressional map Friday, Nov. 15, without approving any additional amendments. In addition, the N.C. Supreme Court has decided not to hear an appeal of redrawn legislative districts plaintiffs challenged as partisan...
Republican lawmakers are forcing their Democratic colleagues to choose between sustaining Gov. Roy Cooper’s budget veto or securing higher teacher pay raises. On Wednesday, Oct. 30, Republicans introduced a mini-budget in the House Education Appropriations Committee covering teacher pay raises. A conference report to Senate Bill 354 served as the vehicle for the pay raises....
North Carolina lawmakers have just nine days to draw new voter district maps. They’re off to a rough start. A three-judge panel on Sept. 3 told Republican lawmakers to throw out their state legislative maps — which were subject to “extreme partisan gerrymandering”— and start over. House and Senate majority leaders aren’t happy with the...
The Senate passed its version of a $23.9 billion 2019-20 budget amid sharp rhetoric that broke along partisan and regional divides. Sen. Don Davis, D-Greene, condemned Republicans, accusing them of using the budget process to punish Eastern North Carolina over a governance dispute between Vidant Medical Center and the UNC System Board of Governors. Davis...
Reports of Medicaid expansion’s death in this legislative session might be greatly exaggerated. At least that’s the view of Gerry Cohen, former special counsel to the General Assembly, who thinks a possible procedural faux pas by freshman Sen. Kirk deViere, D-Cumberland, wasn’t a fatal flub. DeViere offered an amendment Wednesday, March 13, to add roughly...
Panelists debating a proposed constitutional amendment creating a new state elections/ethics board offered starkly different views about the threats to separation of powers. Critics see the proposed amendment — establishing a Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement — as a continuing effort by Republicans to shift executive branch authority to the legislature. Advocates...
Chris Anglin was a relatively unknown late addition to a state Supreme Court race. The General Assembly propelled him into the spotlight by passing Senate Bill 3. S.B. 3, the Party Disclosure/2018 Judicial Races Act, requires candidates for judicial races to be registered with the party label they’re using for at least 90 days before filing....
Republican legislative leaders’ decision to hold secretive budget deliberations was bad politics, and could further motivate angry Democrats to flood the voting booth this fall, political observers say. GOP leaders counter that the budget they unveiled Monday night (links here) merely makes some minor adjustments in the two-year agreement enacted last year. In their view,...
Longtime observers of the state’s electoral system say some North Carolina judicial districts might be unconstitutional, and ripe for legal challenges. Members of the Senate Select Committee on Judicial Reform and Redistricting expressed alarm at a Nov. 8 meeting. They may urge a fresh set of judicial districts at next year’s legislative session — the...
Republicans chose to shun race as a consideration in remapping 28 legislative districts federal courts have deemed racial gerrymanders. Relying so heavily on that strategy might backfire as the case moves forward, a constitutional scholar says. While the GOP’s eventual goal is to maintain its supermajority status in both bodies of the General Assembly, courts may...
